[Suggestion] Remove the card draw from all traits!

I think it was a design mistake to add a card draw as an automatic element to all Traits. In this post, I'll argue that the automatic card draw that is part of the "Trait" mechanic should be removed. It can be readded to certain cards as a special effect (similar to Spin Around and others) but for most cards, the game is better balanced without it. Yes, this is a blanket nerf but I believe that it will benefit the game.

This is a lengthy post so please bear with me. Let me give the reasons first and then make specific suggestions in the second post.

I understand the initial idea: a trait is a passive effect, and so you add a card draw to still give the player cards to actively play. This is good design for situational traits like Immovable. However, many traits are very good on their own merit and don't need this bonus. Slippery, which is equal to 3 cantrip Scamper, comes to mind. And it goes downhill from there.

The game can handle a free card draw on a few select cards. However, when 12 out of 36 cards cycle, or a third of your deck, the entire game becomes very hard to balance. This is a meta game problem that can be avoided.

C'mon, click those traits and let me take my turn...

The most obvious problem is that it slows down the game. It's not fun to wait for the opponent while he clicks through 5, 6 cycling cards, pushes out traits he just attached, then thinks for another minute while assessing the new situation. But the problems run deeper.

Is this a Card Hunter specific problem?

In Card Hunter, decks have a fixed total value, determined by yellow and blue tokens. Cards are assigned different power levels. In Card Hunter, these cards are more expensive to put in your deck. This is a very different mechanic from CCGs like Magic the Gathering and Shadow Era. In these games, powerful cards are more expensive to play from your hand through a resource mechanic. In Shadow Era, if I draw all my 5 and 6 resource creatures in one round, I can't play them all because I won't have the resources.

In Card Hunter, if I draw 5 Obliterating Bludgeon, I can just whack as I please as long as I have enough enemies around. This is why Card Hunter is more sensitive to "deck contraction" than other CCGs.

What's deck contraction?

Some cards are "not there", i.e. I draw them but they allow me to draw another one. Traits are the main example. In effect, each trait you add increases the chance to draw your most powerful cards in any given turn.

Trembling Staff is one of the most extreme examples in this game. On first sight, this item looks terrible. 2x Vulnerable and Combustible? Should this be called Suicide Staff? The game values both of these handicaps as a -3 to item level (roughly). Which is why this staff can pack a gold and two bronze and still only be valued level 3. So not only does it give you a token-free gold attack, it also effectively reduces your deck size from 36 to 33. This item alone increases the chance to draw the card you want (with 2 draws) from 5.6% to 6.1%.

Not much? What about stacking 12 traits, as in a typical top-level deck? 8.5%? But not only is the non-cycle core deck smaller, it also has higher quality cards since most handicaps are valued between -3 and 0. Essentially, they are a free self-target Inspiration.

But why not just build a cycling deck and roll with it?

Cycling decks are very contracted and specialized. With 12 cards just for cycling, there isn't much room left for flexibility and creativity in the remaining 24, especially since you're locked in for the items that provide the cycling. They are min-maxed one-trick ponies. They make the game boring, and that's a problem.

A side effect is that high-level play becomes incestous, with just a few decks and strategies dominating. Often, those decks get trounced when they need to play at lower ELOs, because there is more deck variety in the 1000-1200 range and you lack the flexibility to deal with it.

Fairness

To make it even worse, those cycling opportunities aren't equally distributed, they prefer some decks over others, based on item availability. Right now, Control Wizards get a metagame bonus because they have weapons with up to 3 cycle cards, they get the only non-token 3-trait skill (Electroporter Novice) and they can stack non-handicaps like Squeamish.

 

Luckily, there aren't that many handicap and trait cards, making it possible to fix this.

Handicaps

Brain Burn and Ouch! are already on the dev's watch list. If you're planning to nerf them anyway, removing the card draw is a good way to go.

Combustible could be much worse if fire spells were better (aside from Firestorm). It will survive the removed draw.

Cowardly is bad news... removing the trait card draw will zero the chance that you draw an attack after just discarding all of them. Cowardly items don't see much use in PVP anyway, so not much change there. Dropped Guard is similar. Without the card draw, I'd change it slightly to only discard blocks, not armors. It's still limiting enough.

Defensiveness is way too punishing right now. It makes Melvelous a joke. Without the card draw, but with a more favorable save (4+ or even 3+) it would be better balanced after all. Large Weapon isn't quite as crippling as Defensiveness, but again with this card I'd prefer an easier save over a card draw.

Demonic Revenge is quite punishing at 5 damage. I'd re-add the card draw for this one, as Demonic Feedbacks evil twin.
Together with Loner, these are the drawbacks that killed me more than any. Maybe re-add the card draw on this one too.
Traveling Curse - this one adds itself to the enemy deck, which balances it already. Removing the card draw could ruin its popularity... If you want to keep the power level relative to Demonic Revenge, keep the card draw.
Fright... well if you can't play attacks that extra card won't help much anyway.

Fumble is "discard a card, draw a card" right now. Removing the draw would make it an actual drawback instead of an autoplayed Inspiration.

Mind Leak - without the card draw, reduce duration to 1. It's still bad news.

Obvious Maneuver already has "no draw against the DM" in place. Just remove it altogether (although this card is much more damaging in PVP)

Squeamish is already rated paper because it's not a drawback for some builds. Remove the card draw.

Superstitious or "elf suicide". Rather than draw a card (that then gets discarded with the entire deck, thanks!) I'd have the discard limited to 2, or even better 3 cards. It's not that bad in PVP, but in SP on maps with many many monsters it completely shuts you down.

Trip shuts the PC down. Enemies can just move away, and it doesn't matter how many cards you have on your hand anyway (unless you draw a purge or more cycle traits)...

Vulnerable and Wimpy are treated as minor inconveniences, not drawbacks, so removing the card draw should make them "proper" drawbacks.

Arcane Feedback and Slowed are a bit odd since they should be traits but aren't (because these are very early cards that were implemented before traits). With the card draw removed, they can be made traits without changing the game balance much.

Skill Traits

Bruiser, Impaler, Slicer - Due to the limited nature of the bonus, they are more or less cycling cards right now. Remove the cycling, and they become near-useless. However, I'd rather use the chance to give them a boost that is not a card draw. I've made a separate thread about fixing martial traits.

Altruism and Talented Healer are good in their own right. Holy Presence could enjoy a slight boost, such as increasing the healing from 1 hp to 3 hp.

Dimensional Traveller is already one of the best cards in the game, and serves very well as a last minute lava avoider. No boost needed.

Kindler vs. Firestarter: Add the card draw to Kindler, remove it from Firestarter (option: increase damage bonus on Firestarter by 1). That way, instead of having a clearly weaker and a clearly stronger card (at the same quality, no less), you have to make a tactical choice: Do I want the weaker cycling trait or the costly powerful one?
Do the same with Spark Inductor vs. Spark Generator.

Other Traits

Immovable is a silver card. As such, it is one of the few traits that has the card draw priced in, so it gets to keep it. Yay!

Slippery - keep the card draw. The reason is that this card is balanced against other racial specials, notably Toughness and Dwarven Battle Cry. Unless these are rebalanced in some way, keep Slippery as-is.

 

Instead of re working the entire system, why not adjust the offenders first? Its not like EVERY card with drawbacks is overpowered. Its CERTAIN cards. Why not address those cards first before a massive revamp?

 

Because the basic trait concept is borked.

You can do this in baby steps if you want:
#1 Remove "draw a card" from the definition of trait.
#2 Add "draw a card" to all cards with trait. (At this point, nothing has changed except internal programming.)
#3 Remove "draw a card" from the cards you want to nerf.

However, going through the list of traits, 80% - 90% would be better cards without the card draw (and possibly a slight boost to rebalance them). The nuclear option makes a better game.

There is an added bonus of removing the card draw from the trait definition and adding it to the card as explicit text: Newbie-friendliness. It's one of those gotcha moments that confuse new players. Gotchas drive away players and that's bad for the future of Card Hunter. This is why you'll see me point at them again and again and again.

 

I think this is kinda extreme and would destroy the usage of most if not all traits.

First thing first Fumble is not self inspire it is a minus 1 in term of card advantage. Lets say you have 2 cards left next turn you draw fumble you will have 4 cards at the end of the fumble whereas if you didn't have it you will have 5 cards.Under your idea fumble would only leave you with 3 cards including one of which is the default move card. This means it would be virtually impossible for you to win after you short perplexing yourself.

Lets compare any trait after the cycle is remove against Perplexing Ray. Perplexing ray is a silver card that trades one of your card for one of the enemy's card and most people consider it fair. Now for any trait it traits zero of the enemy card for 1 of your card. This make running a trait strictly worst then the enemy perplexing ray you. This is insane running a trait that would give your enemy half your card draw if not your entire card draw for an entire turn now that is suicidal.

Ok. If you remove the draw a card part of the trait i would argue that no warrior will ran martial skills unless they like to lose. The best martial skill now is Savory Attacker if it has no cycle the traits would be equivalent to the card advantage of one fumble each. Therefore savery attacker can be seen as fumble fumble , team run!. This is almost strictly worst then not equipping any martial skill where you get 2 bludgeon and one flimsy block not to mention it waste one . What this change would do would be to remove any item with traits in them as traits are almost strictly worse then almost all other cards.

If cycle is removed from traits. It would need to be buffed to obscene levels for it to be justifiably ran by anyone.

 

I hope the devs are taking notes because this is exactly how not to balance a game. Instead of focusing on some of the main reasons why control wizard are powerful, you suggest they make fundamental changes to the core of the game that would pretty much change the whole game. And change it for the worse because not being able to draw a replacement card would slow down the matches a lot.

Idea with balancing is that you balance things, not make them extinct. If step warriors dominate, you do not simply remove all step cards from the game. If trait cycling dominates, you do not take away card drawing, which is the only advantage that traits have, and the only thing that makes them unique.

Related to this.. I don't believe I'm going to say this but I actually miss fighting card draw decks. While they were kind of annoying to play against, they were clever and unique, and beating them was fun. I think that the devs nerfed that particular strategy way too much and made it extinct which is a shame. Had the nerf been a bit smaller, people could have still used that deck but it wouldn't have been so overpowering. I'd hate to see something similar happen with control wizards. I'd hate to wake up one morning and see that the newest patch completely kills the build.

Traits themselves make sense and work just fine. There is nothing wrong with the concept of having traits and drawing replacement cards. The issue here is some of the trait effects and items. For example Squeamish is supposed to be a drawback but in reality you barely even notice it. Vulnerability sounds bad but even that is not that big of a deal really. And when you have barely noticeable traits like these on items that have awesome cards like Winds Of War, we suddenly have a problem.

Fright is a good example of a drawback trait that does its job well. It's a card that can really hurt in some situations you but it doesn't immediately kill you like for example Mind Burn on an elf wizard. If it was possible to nerf Squemish and Vulnerable so that they would actually hurt you, decks like control wizards would take a big hit, but still able to be competitive. That might not be enough though to fully balance it, but it would definitely make more sense than start messing with the core mechanics of the game.

You are not addressing the real problem here, and are instead "going nuts" with nerfing.

 

The lady doeth protest too much, methinks.

If nerfing traits is a nerf to control wizards, something fishy is going on that needs to be fixed. If control wizards were really balanced, then a control wizard deck with 36 control cards should be just as good as a deck with 24 control cards and 12 cycling traits. I don't think it is. Frankly, I think I have my finger right on the money here.

EDIT: To be clear, card draws on expensive cards like silver Immovable are fine. You pay a price for it.
The problem are card draws on black value handicaps, which make these cards worth more than some bronzes. This ruins game balance.

 

I agree, and I've written that above (which may have been lost in the wall of text). The current warrior traits SUCK, with or without card draw.

Buff warrior trait cards to make them equal to a bronze quality card, which they are supposed to be. Increase the cards they apply to. Make them count, not just puny +1 damage.

However, this is a different issue, so I wanted to keep it in a different thread.

 

On a pure fun perspective I'd like to emphazise that too many replacing traits make the game more tedious both to play and to follow on what is going on.
Some points, game play wise:
- Traits that have a dramatic effect on game are too random to be fun. Some SP fights where the difficulty of an encounter changes drastically depending if an enemy draws Fright or some other really bad trait.
- Traits that stick to your hand are fun, since they affect the game in more ways. You might want to figure out how to get them replaced or discarded in the end of the round etc.

But as I said elsewhere, should be careful with too drastic changes since it affects class balance, SP & quest difficulty etc. And if we'd remove self replacing it would make many items too random (to be useful they should contain even more powerful good cards to offset the bad ones, leaving to more random outcomes). And I kind of like the deck building concept of cards with small effect but ability to draw more of them.

A good option might be to make the card replacement delayed to next turn, then you couldn't stack too many of these or you might be totally useless for a turn. Would make replacing traits considerably worse already by that, I guess.

 

Very nice idea!

The wording could be "When you discard this trait, draw a card." That way, the trait is still deck-neutral, but you avoid the annoying start-of-turn cycles where you or the opponent clicks through 8 different cards.

I wouldn't implement it as a default for all traits, but it could work to balance the attached ones with a duration. I'm thinking of Trip, Vulnerable and the likes.

It also has the added benefit that the opponent has to make a tactical decision whether he/she wants to push out your traits with purge, fire damage and the like or not.

 

I could see the vague possibility of abusing this to set up a turn where your trait-cycling wizard starts a round with 7+ cards in hand, but it would be really hard to pull off consistently. I do like it far more than the current state of affairs.

Also, some thought might need to go towards whether cards like Purge negate that drawing effect...

 

Wizards have more access to tokenless traits than other classes thanks to Trembling Staff, Robe Of Lightness, and Electroporter Novice. That's why they're able to abuse trait-cycling to an extent that other classes can't.

EDIT: Oh, I see now that you mentioned this in the original wall-of-text. I think this is the root of the problem with trait-cycling, because I haven't seen any class except wizards successfully abuse trait-cycling.

 

One super harsh solution would be for all traits to sit in your hand like slow. No one gets any draws! but that is obviously way way to harsh. Instead of revamping the whole trait system, we could just make the worst offenders act like slow. If squeamish sat in your hand, it would be a heck of a lot more punishing to take runestones. And plus you have to be judicious in your card use to get rid of it, decisions, tactics and counters galore! I could see people using short perplexing ray on themselves to clear out their terrible cards, which would be hilarious just all round.

However, despite what others have said, I think you may have swung the nerf bat too lightly, simply for consistency's sake, traits should all act the same, or you need to create a new category of card. But seeing as cards like slow already exist, moving cards into that category wouldn't require as much re-working as your scheme.

Does anyone have a harsher build for squeamish? Assuming it's kept as a trait, how would one go about making it punishing, without say getting too close to what fright does as well.

 

I was all for a nerf to card drawing, but card drawing at least provided variety and options. Trait and Card cycling provide too much card advantage to be overcome, and the classes that have the best itemization/abilities that grant card advantage and tokenless triple traits (wizards --> warriors --> priests) are dominating right now.

If the devs aren't willing to FIX trait and card cycling, I'd actually advocate reverting the prior card drawing patch. The game is more imbalanced now, with less variety and even less skill needed. That has to be exactly the type of scenario the devs presumed a nerf to card draw was supposed to counter. As it is, literally anyone can play at a high rating running 3 wizards. That's one reason elo inflation is so high as well. 3 control wiz teams pretty much farm everyone, and those of us who were higher rated before, who refuse to employ this strategy are left playing at lower ratings to try and figure a counter, or to use certain team comps that can't be competitive against warriors teams also.

I think the following should happen:

- [Traits] Fix wizard itemization and increase the penalty on certain drawbacks / decrease the efficacy of certain traits, and if wizards are going to have so many tokenless items that cause imbalance, either add priest/warrior items that do the same, or add a token cost to the wizard items.
- [Card Advantage] Fix dual purpose cards that are overpowered to balance the meta game. This should happen regardless of anything related to traits, because the metagame will NEVER be balanced so long as Vibrant Pain, Nimble Strike in general, WoW/SPray.

 

Er, does 3DC really take less skill than draw-firestorm?

(I do like both suggestions above... but the preceding exposition seems a bit exaggerated.)

 

Draw-firestorm never dominated anything, it was a cheap way to get an otherwise not good player to 13-1500. Now those same players can use the same strategy; go FOTM, rely on broken mechanics, but they can get higher rating due to rating inflation and no viable counters outside of 1-2 builds that cannot have a draw advantage the same way these comps due. The top teams were triple priest, two priest/1 warrior or 111 during card draw. There were 2 firestorm teams in the top 25, and they were there because they were exceptional players.

 

Just change and reword Squemish a bit:

Trait. When you play a card, you may not target a character whose health is less than half of his maximum life.

Explanation: Firestorm and not single target character spells would still work all the time. But control and damage spells would not. So while some of three wizards could still be able to kill enemy, there is a chance, that someone would be a bit less threat. With good tactic you would be able to overcome this issue, but this will be real pain and probably not worth the risk - just like many other drawbacks.

 

Good suggestion! Much better change (if required) than the nuking solution IMO. And yeah, see SLG post. I agree with it entirely.

 

You can even tweak this by changing if it works for only damaging spells or all. Or even make half of life replaced with some other value, maybe even fixed, like 10 hp, if tests would show that half life is too much for a warrior life pool.

 

@Mosalla: I'm sorry but you're missing the point. Squeamish is good for control Wizards because they stack damage spells that don't attack. Firewall, Volcano etc. attack a square. It's just coincidence that someone is standing on it.

Winds of War only does one damage, so it also never triggers Squeamish.

Fun Fact: You could also abuse Squeamish on a Priest who only packs Touch of Death. But I don't think there are enough Touch of Death and Squeamish items for Priests to make a difference.